Category: Film Music and Sound

Film, Film Music and Sound

Eraserhead (1977) – Sickly Soundscapes (David Lynch).

For a film as heavily symbolic as David Lynch’s Eraserhead (1977), readings of its aesthetic aspects are often commonplace within the cinematic discourse of the film.  Lynch has often made explicit use of the medium’s inherent dream-state as a tool to question the viewer on various topics, often finding visual expression through symbolic and highly personal direction.  Though Eraserhead was his first feature film, his … Continue reading Eraserhead (1977) – Sickly Soundscapes (David Lynch).

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Film, Film Music and Sound, Folk Horror

The Music of Folk Horror – Part 4 (The Wicker Man’s Narrative Functionality).

Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Narrative Functionality. The music of The Wicker Man, while having few boundaries in terms of the effect of its various functions on its narrative content, is split into several different types.  For this section, the specific type of music to be looked at is the folk song; a form that makes several appearance in the film with original compositions … Continue reading The Music of Folk Horror – Part 4 (The Wicker Man’s Narrative Functionality).

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Film, Film Music and Sound

Mozart in Le Bonheur (1965) – Agnès Varda.

It must have come as a political shock to see a film in 1965 highlight, with such casual brutality, the privilege of the male patriarch.  Agnès Varda’s third feature, Le Bonheur, is such a contradiction in its conveyance of a happiness, ignorant of morality, that its shock is rarely diminished.  The film is a colourful, seasonal evocation of a very unusual ménage à trios which … Continue reading Mozart in Le Bonheur (1965) – Agnès Varda.

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Film, Film Music and Sound

The Female Voice in Subversive Soundtracks of the Counter-Culture Era.

The Female Voice in Subversive Soundtracks of the Counter-Culture Era. After a recent viewing of Alan J. Pakula’s crime thriller, Klute (1971), something occurred at the back of my mind that connected the film with a number of others.  At first, I struggled with my memory as to what exactly it was about the film that was bringing other films of the era to mind; … Continue reading The Female Voice in Subversive Soundtracks of the Counter-Culture Era.

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Film, Film Music and Sound, Folk Horror

The Music of Folk Horror – Part 3 (The Wicker Man’s Folk Aesthetics).

Part 1. Part 2. Tradition Through Folk Aesthetics in the Music of The Wicker Man (1973). The first case study film for this essay is Robin Hardy’s 1973 film, The Wicker Man.  Though it is the latest of the films to be looked at, it has the most complex relationship with its music, formed entirely of its own accord rather than on folk horror practices … Continue reading The Music of Folk Horror – Part 3 (The Wicker Man’s Folk Aesthetics).

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Film, Film Music and Sound

Sounds of the City – Defining the Metropolis in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954).

In spite of being set in the most cramped of city-based fictional areas, Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954) successfully presents the bustling aesthetics of a whole metropolis while managing to retain an almost claustrophobic isolation.  In the film, Hitchcock presents a temporarily wheelchair-bound photographer who becomes obsessed with a neighbour. He suspects the unusual man to have murdered his wife.  Rear Window presents a number … Continue reading Sounds of the City – Defining the Metropolis in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954).

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Film, Film Music and Sound

Point Blank (John Boorman, 1967) – Rhythmic Footsteps and Diegetic Power.

What is the best way for a film to show the power of a character?  Is it to retain the power within the narrative world and show it be all encompassing, or is it better to show it to have control over specific qualities of the medium itself?  One of the best examples of this debate to be realised in cinematic aesthetics is in John … Continue reading Point Blank (John Boorman, 1967) – Rhythmic Footsteps and Diegetic Power.

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Film, Film Music and Sound, Folk Horror

The Music of Folk Horror – Part 2 (Folk Horror Chain and Witchfinder General).

Part 1. Thematic Material of the Folk Horror Chain. “Grendel was the name of this grim demon, haunting the marches, marauding round the heath and the desolate fens; he had dwelt for a time in misery among the banished monsters, Cain’s clan, whom the creator had outlawed and condemned as outcasts.” (Heaney, p.6, 1999). Though the historic and cultural factors around why folk horror was … Continue reading The Music of Folk Horror – Part 2 (Folk Horror Chain and Witchfinder General).

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Film, Film Music and Sound, Folk Horror

The Music of Folk Horror – Part 1 (Sub-Genre Theories).

The Sounds of Sacrifice: The Music of British Folk Horror Films. Introduction. In the late 1960s and the early 1970s, a small group of horror films made in Britain set themselves apart from the rest of the genre, becoming an aptly cult phenomena now acknowledged under the banner of folk horror.  As a newly recognised sub-genre, it can be difficult to assess though, as new … Continue reading The Music of Folk Horror – Part 1 (Sub-Genre Theories).

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Film, Film Music and Sound

The Music of If…. (1968, Lindsay Anderson).

Lindsay Anderson’s If…. (1968) has so many obvious visual qualities that it can sometimes be easy to overlook its highly original and thematically motivated use of music.  Anderson’s films are littered with all sorts of aural qualities though often tended to be more overt in his trilogy of Mick Travis films, the other two instalments being O’Lucky Man (1973) and Britannia Hospital (1982).  If…., however, … Continue reading The Music of If…. (1968, Lindsay Anderson).

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